Some visitors may have been distracted by the 20OC temperature on Thursday evening; however, the answer to where everyone was, is that they were all packed in to one room of the exhibition to see Julieann O'Malley's performance Salty Milk: Violation of Expectation. For whatever reason, there hasn't been as much performance art to see in Liverpool as there has been in Manchester or Birmingham; certainly since I moved to the city in 2003. Manchester City Art Gallery in particular bought performance into the mainstream with their 2011 exhibition, 11 Rooms. So maybe it is no surprise that O'Malley lives and has a studio in Liverpool, but regularly takes part in avant-garde theatre projects Manchester. What O'Malley demonstrated on Thursday evening is that not only is there an appetite in Liverpool for performance art, but that audiences will cram into a very small room to see a very challenging and (at over two hours) durational example of the art form.

Salty Milk: Violation of Expectation had a 1970s aesthetic, which I interpreted as homage to the feminist artists of that era who used performance as an alternative to the popular minimalist art produced by their male counterparts. O'Malley says that her artwork asks questions about why we do the things that we do. Here the activities of baking, sharing, note-writing, over-indulging, pregnancy and getting-ready-for-night-out were all presented back to the audience for examination. I won't go in to detail but the audience were rewarded for their patience with a pretty gruesome display. They seemed to have enjoyed it though: all too often going to an art opening can be more about catching up with friends than engaging with the artworks, and this was refreshingly different.

If your stomach wasn't turned enough, the work of Nicki McCubbing might just finish you off. I feel compelled to say that McCubbing's work isn't for the feint hearted, as that includes myself. She says that her macabre work is a product of the city as "jokes are often used by Liverpool people to conceal and overcome problems"; she seems to have picked up the mantle of Jake and Dinos Chapman and run with it into the nearest Woolworths. Although it is hard to look at, this is the best example of this kind of work that I have seen and McCubbing has a skill for making dolls and other low-culture artefacts into convincing sculptural objects.

The last two rooms contained paintings by Ria Fell and drawings by Penny Davenport. Davenport's drawings are one of my highlights from all three parts of the Spectrum series. Using very fine obsessive mark-making, she produces images that are folkloric , entertaining and cleverly play with negative space. In the adjacent room I felt a bit sorry for Fell's paintings as they were hung in what was essentially a corridor to O'Malley's performance; however, they were well executed paintings that combined several artistic traditions in a fresh way.

At the close of the series it seems appropriate to reflect on what I have learnt about art and visiting exhibitions in Liverpool today. Interestingly, 10 of the 16 artists in the Spectrum series were women. A lot is written about how women are kept from success in the art-world as their time is directed towards caring for their partners and offspring - I hope that this exhibition is a sign that these barriers are breaking down. Another shift that Spectrum has demonstrated is in the makeup of the gallery goers visiting artist-led spaces. Perhaps it is because artist-led galleries are often in hard to find spaces on the edge of cities, but WCS seems to attract an intergenerational mix of regular gallery goers and those who are passing and curious. I haven't got data to support these observations - and the diversity of the audience could be due to the marketing for Liverpool Art Month. Whatever the cause, the result is positive for the city and definitely good reason for the Arts Council England to continue to support endeavours such as this.

Spectrum Part 3 continues until Sunday 27 May open 12-4pm

This experience made me realise that curating contemporary art does not only require consideration of the space, architecture and venue brand, but also requires an understanding of the wider context; what is happening in the surrounding locality, what else is on offer and what city-wide programming an exhibition can link into. The artists selected this week could not have been more different from the first week. In Spectrum part II the curators were able to introduce a more subversive, sexy, dark, silly and generally extreme sensibility. In particular, the work of Tony Knox and Roly Carline work benefited from the heady, anything-goes atmosphere in the Ropewalks.

The first room was given over to an installation by long-time Liverpool scenester Tony Knox aka 'Mothman'. Knox's presentation (various pieces of existing work - chosen by the three Spectrum curators) was essentially a set for his performance, to take place the following evening as part of Light Night. Knox's work explores wrestling and the iconography of cartoon characters, and his Mothman alter ego could be either a wrestler or a graphic novel anti-hero. His work felt a bit lost without him performing in it but I really liked the video projected onto a miniature boxing ring (pictured).

Roly Carline's film I grew up in the 90s and I loved it, involved: egg box pecs, two men in fake moustaches arguing in the bath, Peter Andre giving singing lessons, Vanilla Ice and Shaggy, a lot of papier-mâché and ambitious choreography. The sum of these parts created an artwork that reminded me of artists Ryan Trecartin and Paul McCarthy, the film Trash Humpers and the TV creations Bo Selecta and Beavis and Butthead. It was repulsive but oddly compelling.

At the back of WCS, filled with pink light and full of mysterious assemblages was the installation For Sale: baby shoes, never worn by Michael Aitken. Following on from Emily Speed's literature-inspired artwork in the first week, this title is a six-word short story by Ernest Hemingway. Aitken's work usually seems like a search for identity and happiness, started in adolescence and doomed to failure. This piece maintains his penchant for visual clues, but seems to be hiding its meaning (if one even exists) even more deeply than usual.

The last two rooms were very different in tone to the rest of the exhibition although there was still a dark undercurrent. The figures and scenarios in Rhonda Davies prints and drawings are familiar yet strange, innocent yet sexy and each one was a visual treat. In the final room there was a single image by Adriana Galuppo. Imagem da Besta (translated as 'Image of the Beast') exposes the use of propaganda in São Paulo, Brazil, where ordinary people are preached to via road-side billboards. The space around the photograph grounded it in an urban context and also allowed time for the frightening Orwellian significance of the image to sink in.

This was another very good exhibition, showcasing a diverse bunch of practitioners and some memorable works. There have been loads of great events lately that have helped to assert Liverpool's status as a cultural destination for families; but it is good that we also have artist-led venues taking risks and providing a platform for edgy contemporary art. All that remains to be seen is whether the team at WCS can maintain this quality for the final instalment of Spectrum, opening 24 May at 6pm.

It was really interesting to hear about his work - both the theories behind it and also the method of creating it by building up layers of paint, which he describes as akin to print making. He paints on glass so that the first marks he makes become the surface of the finished work. Once completed and dry, Fox peels it off - "it becomes like a floppy pancake" and places it on to a piece of Victorian furniture or, in the case of Metatopia, a circular disc because "it was about not reading it as a painting, about another sort of space".

His work is inspired by nostalgia so it makes sense that he has donated this work to the Walker Art Gallery, which he has such fond memories of from his time as a student in Liverpool. But he also sees his donation as a gift to the city - or as he puts it "a love letter to Liverpool".